Neville tells Amorim to copy Maresca strategy after 'messy' defeat

A statement he made after Man United's 3-2 defeat to Nottingham Forest.

While the Red Devils struggle in 13th, Chelsea are enjoying their time in second, punching above the weight of what was expected this season.

Enzo Maresca left his promoted Leicester City side to replace Mauricio Pochettino and has provided the west London club with stability and hope.

Fans are beaming once again after a period of frustration, splashing the cash while seemingly wasting it at the same time as they finished 12th in the 2022/23 campaign.

But now with a settled side they are playing entertaining football.

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The Blues have scored 57 goals in 22 matches in all competitions this season. A goals per game ratio of 2.6 - their best in a single campaign ever.

Chelsea and Man United are on differing sides of the success to failure spectrum.

Speaking to NBC Sports about his former team and it's new head coach Neville said: "When you keep changing players, when you keep changing your back three, you take five players off, you're basically saying to all of them effectively, because they've obviously been left out of the start of the game, that you don't trust them.

"Ten Hag kept doing that a few weeks ago, he kept changing the back players, changing the midfield, all of a sudden you've got a completely different system, a completely different set of players on the pitch at the end of the game and you never get stability or consistency.

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"There's just an element of just leave the players on. They weren't playing that bad in the first half, obviously they were undermined by the set-pieces in terms of the corners but the football generally wasn't that bad.

"Then you allow two mistakes that were made after half time within the first 10 minutes to undermine you, then you basically make changes and all of a sudden everything falls to pieces."

He continued: "It looked really scruffy, really scruffy, it looked a mess at the end, with no real shape. I actually think at least in the first half they weren't brilliant but at least they had a shape to them.

"I think I said this with Ten Hag for about 12 months - pick an eleven that you think are the best.

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"I thought today, we all agreed before the game, we thought that eleven, apart from Luke Shaw, was close to United's best eleven as you could get.

"I'm not saying don't make a substitution but almost give that eleven the faith and trust.

"Maresca is doing it now at Chelsea, he's playing an eleven on a Sunday or a Saturday and then he's playing a different eleven in midweek. He's sending some messages to the players that there's stability here, this is what we're going to do, this is how we're going to play, this is an idea I believe in.

"When you change players all the time you're almost saying to everybody you're just juggling plates all the time, there's no consistency or familiarity that can build with players, you need to build patterns together, you need to build an idea of what you're doing together and they can never do that if you're changing players in all areas of the pitch."

Maresca's team is one full of talent meaning promising players like Christopher Nkunku often receive little game time within the league.

As Amorim builds his team tough decisions like those will continue to arise.